


The Tender Bruise.

by wily_one24



Series: Bruises [1]
Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-05-21
Updated: 2007-05-21
Packaged: 2017-11-05 11:49:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/406065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wily_one24/pseuds/wily_one24
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They don’t really do anything except exchange insults in public and bodily fluids in private.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Tender Bruise.

**Author's Note:**

> **Rating:** R, for language, some sexual and dark themes.  
>  **Pairing:** Logan/Veronica.  
>  **Warnings:** Not an entirely happy fic, some dark themes, probably not popular.  
>  **Spoilers:** It’s not really an AU, so much as it is a Parallel-U of Season One, so if you’ve seen that season, you’re fine. Otherwise, I wouldn’t recommend it.  
>  **Summary:** They don’t really do anything except exchange insults in public and bodily fluids in private.  
>  **Disclaimer:** Not mine, this is why.

***  
 **THE TENDER BRUISE**  
***

The first time he fucks her it’s hard and angry and brutal.

He’s drunk and probably high from the small white tablet Dick passed him with a wink. All he can remember is yelling and everyone at the party shouting back at him, broken glass and sore fists and then the cold of night air and a street curb and somehow she was the only one left, even though she hadn’t been there to start with. There’s something about insults and digging too deep for words that won’t come and the bored, cold calm of her voice making him angry until he shoves her against the wall.

Hours later he wakes up to find himself in bed with rapidly cooling sheets, pounding in his head, and a pillow tainted with blood. The sound of the shower can’t block out her sobs as he tries to plead through a locked door.

She leaves with a split lip and finger shaped bruises on her wrists and hips, without saying a word, and he lets her.

***

The second time she tears strips from his flesh, bright and stinging and bloody, and he lets her.

He follows her around like a puppy, pleading for any second or moment she deigns to spare him, which aren’t many. He begs her, but he’s not sure for what. An apology won’t cut it and he can’t explain it. He just wants her to stop pretending nothing happened.

One night, when he’s sure her father isn’t there, he speaks to her through the front door until a dog whines loudly, until she opens it with a sigh, until she finally meets his eyes.

There’s a sequence he can never remember afterwards, but she’s yelling and crying and he’s trying to calm her down and then she’s hitting him, big pounding fists on the middle of his chest and the only thing he can think to do is kiss her quiet.

He leaves with three trenches down the side of his cheek, deep gouging nail marks, and it’s still not enough.

***

He doesn’t know who calls her or why she comes when they do, but he can barely form any words but her name and that’s the only thing that makes sense.

She’s angry and bitter and she bites her cheek when he stumbles getting into her car, but he can see something in her eyes, something like distrust and fear and it makes him sick. Makes him weak and sorry and angry all at once. Angry enough to play meek, to submit to her short shrift orders and cold hard hands pushing him through the door, to let her run the show until the lock hisses closed and he pushes her down onto the bed and she stops fighting back, staring up at the ceiling with her fingers curling into the sheets.

Sometimes he wishes she would close her eyes.

***

He knocks on her bedroom window the night after he pledges half a million of his father’s money to charity. She lets him in without a word and silently locks her door. He doesn’t say anything, but she has to know something, she stays pliant and gentle and pretends not to feel hot tears on the side of her neck.

He keeps the shirt on his back, but he strips her naked.

***

He’s stopped counting by the time she first reaches out to him.

A simple SMS, demanding he meet her in the pool house. He’s nervous and confused and completely blown away by her tear-streaked face. She looks thin and worn down and tired in her dark skirt and small sweater and she tells him to shut up and he does.

Her fingers shake when they take his shirt, strip the pants from his hips, pushing and pushing until he pushes back, until he gives her what she wants. Oblivion. It’s not until he has two fingers of one hand buried deep inside her and the other hand brushing hair out of her face that he sees it.

He didn’t cause these tears for once, but it’s still his job to fix them.

***

Neither of them says a word when his mother dies.

She waits for him in his room, meets him there after he’s said goodbye to a houseful of strangers paying their respects, and he lets her take his wrist, lets her lead him where she wants him, mutely, without complaint. He’s too meek and she’s too soft.

Her clothes disappear and then so do his, she pulls him down and he pushes her onto her back, places his hands on the insides of her knees and spreads her wide. She lets him, an unspoken agreement, she falls pliant like putty in his hands and he pushes at her skin, at her body, trying to shape some reason into anything around him.

His fingers are twisting deep inside her, push and pull and stroke, when he realizes that she’s not going to come this time, not even close, and neither of them really cares. The mission statement has changed and he looks up her body to meet the pity in her eyes. She doesn’t flinch away.

He burrows his face into the flat hollow of her belly and wraps his arms tight around her waist, he can feel her give a gasp against his cheek, but she doesn’t push him away. She wraps her legs around his ribs and he feels soft fingers in the hair at the back of his neck.

Her voice is a soft hum that lets him fall asleep for the first time in days.

***

Sometimes he gets hard thinking about her.

Sometimes, thinking about how much he hates her, he gets even harder, aching and stiff and uncomfortable until he’s forced to seek her out.

Sometimes it’s a taunt, barely disguised hostility thrown across a schoolyard, and she responds in kind, flaying him almost as deeply as he does her. They know their weaknesses, point for point, but he’s a little more vicious, a little more willing to destroy than she ever is. He always has been.

Sometimes he pulls her into a closet, an abandoned room, any space that’s free, and devours the skin on her neck, shoving her clothes up and away and to the side, leaving her crumpled and disheveled, biting at her until she pleads with him not to. Not to do it here, not to leave marks, just… not.

Sometimes he listens, sometimes he doesn’t.

He can’t stop himself, doesn’t even know if he wants to, and the only real question is why she lets him at all.

***

It’s not like he follows her around.

They’re not sweethearts, they’re not dating, they haven’t pledged any sacred vows, they barely even like each other at the best of times, so he doesn’t quite understand the sudden tightening when he sees her with another man.

It could be innocent, it could mean nothing at all, but it sure as hell looks as if she’s flirting with some droopy faced cop, one hand touching his arm and her face pink and open with laughter.

She never laughs with him.

Later that night, he doesn’t give her time to explain. He grabs her, propels her through his room into the en suite, makes her watch in the mirror as he pulls up her skirt, roughly tugging her panties down her legs. Her hands grip the bench hard and their eyes meet, holding fast and almost like a challenge as he fucks her from behind.

He thrusts hard and then slow, stopping just before she wants him to, until she’s shaking, until she’s groaning, until she’s reaching back and clasping at him and then he makes her say his name. Every push forward, every slide home, again and again, his name ripped from her throat.

His name.

Their knees buckle and he slumps against her, chest to her spine, panting against the crook of her neck as her head hangs forward and she bites her lip. Slowly, he reaches around her, aligning his arms against hers, until he can hold her hands still underneath his. His fingers push in among hers, rough amid soft, and it almost feels as if he’s holding her up.

 _Mine_ , he growls it into her ear and her only response is a shudder.

Three days later he gets a parking ticket and he smiles when he reads the name of the deputy, signed angry and slashed across the bottom.

***

She leaves early.

In the middle of the night, when he’s still drowsy, eyes still heavy and muscles limp, when he’s barely awake. Sometimes he feels the shift of the bed when she slides away from him, silently gathering the wreckage of her clothes, other times he wakes up suddenly, cold and alone.

He catches her one night, turning in soft, sly circles, gathering up her socks and pants and anything that might be considered proof of her existence in his room. She doesn’t look at him once.

 _Stay_.

The word falls out of his mouth before he can stop it and he sees her freeze, her shoulder bare in the half moonlight falling through his window. Her eyes glow silver, eerily wide and trapped, as she looks towards the door for an avenue of escape.

 _Just once._ And he doesn’t mean to beg. To cover, he bends at the waist, sitting up and reaching out, closing one hand over a slender wrist and pulling her back. _Just…_

Her nod is lost in the quiet slump of her clothes falling to the ground and she silently crawls back up the bed, carefully and cautiously lying down.

He pulls her against him, feels his body mould against her back. They might be a good fit if she relaxed, but he can feel her skin buzzing with taut awareness, can feel the tension hum all the way through her as she brings her arms in close to her chest and tries not to seem as if she’s ready to snap.

He falls asleep easily. She’s still awake and motionless when he wakes up.

***

He gets the phone call when he least expects it.

She doesn’t tell him why or who or how, merely the where, and he tells her to wait for him, he’ll pick her up. He doesn’t mind all that much, he’s never been to Barstow.

When he sees her, tear hollow eyes, pain and weariness and exhaustion etched into every line of her face, he immediately dismisses any idea of her surviving the flight back. He drives her to a nearby motel instead. It’s not the cheapest place around, but it’s simple and sparse, he has the distinct feeling she’d protest if he tried for anything too expensive. She doesn’t say anything until they walk through the door and her bag slumps to the dingy floor at her feet.

Her eyes close for a second and she sighs, deep and empty, then her shoulders sag as she reaches up to unzip her hoodie.

He reaches out and stops her, covering her hand with his, and her brow creases in confusion, but he just leads her to the bed and sits her down, takes off her shoes and asks her what happened as he kneels in front of her knees. It’s a little too honest and a little too forthright and it almost sounds a little too like conversation to be part of their routine.

But she answers him.

She tells him about her mother, about things he already knows and uses like arrows, things like vodka and alcohol and running away, and then she tells him about threatening photos with her face in the cross hairs, about Jake Kane, about paternity, about Duncan possibly being her brother, about Jake’s henchman ordering everything, about everyone’s alibis being shot to hell, and he thinks he might not be able to breathe.

They lie down still clothed and it doesn’t take her long to fall asleep with fresh silver tear tracks as he stares up at the ceiling with too many questions he doesn’t want. He pulls her towards him and she rolls in her sleep, curling up to his side like a comma, one hand resting on his abdomen and her face puffing warm breath onto his neck.

He wonders if she’ll ever do it when she’s awake.

Even though he doesn’t feel like he deserves it.

***

His daydreams become more elaborate.

Sitting at the lunch table, picking absently at his box of noodles, not listening to the monotonous drone of his friends and their usual banter, he looks across the yard and watches her eat. Her spine is straighter and her features more relaxed when she’s not with him.

He imagines walking over to her, pulling her up from the bench she’s sitting on to the table and spreading her knees wide, imagines pushing himself between them so he can feel the pulse on the insides of her thighs beating against the sensitive skin of his waist.

His tongue licks salty soy from the corners of his lips as he thinks about the taste of her neck, the flush of her skin, how she’d feel if he stripped her shirt from her shoulders and kissed patterns down her neck and over her swollen, nipple peaked breasts in the middle of the crowd.

Standing in front of the journalism class, her voice is solid and strong and authoritative, her eyes don’t falter, and her fingers don’t shake as they hold the sheaf of papers straight in front of her. She gives her presentation easily and with confidence.

He sits at the back of the class, chin leaning in his hand, and imagines her naked. Slowly, as she stands there, his mind swathes her in pink satin, sliding it up over her hips and slipping it over her arms, all the swells and hollows of her. He puts her, puts them both, back in that limo. His brain takes liberties: her hair stays short, but her eyes soften, and somehow Duncan is well and truly absent.

The strawberries in the champagne would make her breathe sweet and tangy as he bites at her lips and he’d pull her hips towards him until her legs straddled his waist and he could push the soft material up her thighs. He’d finger her until she came and then sink all the way inside while she gasped into his ear and the windows fogged up.

He nods at the polite, cautious applause of the class until he remembers where he is and lets the teacher’s voice break into his consciousness as the bell rings. She looks at him with a small curve at the corner of her lips when he doesn’t stand up, placing her notes back into her bag, and her expression is more than knowing.

***

She seems absent sometimes.

Right in the middle of it, in the midst of the most personal act there is, when their bodies are sharing sweat molecules and his elbows shake with the effort of holding him above her, when the walls echo with the slippery slapping sounds of them, her eyes are somewhere else.

He grabs her hips and rolls them, turns until she’s on top, and uses the momentum to lift her up and down, pistons her above him as he watches the careless ebb and flow of her body. She’s like water, rippling and fluid, shaping to fit the moulds around her instead of taking solid form herself.

Eventually her face sharpens, a small flicker of awareness, and she looks down at him.

He asks her where she is and it’s not really a laugh, mirthless and hollow, when she tells him anywhere but here.

***

It seems like a punishment, almost.

He catalogues the different forms of her, the countless personalities, and then compares them all with the one she shows him. They’re brighter and somehow seem more alive, all of them. He’s left with the shadow, the imitation, ironically enough, the ghost.

The comparisons hurt, self-inflicted as they are, and he can’t stop himself.

One night as he pulls her tight against him and she doesn’t resist, but doesn’t really reciprocate, he runs his fingers through her hair and tires to ignore the fact that he has his arm around her shoulders and she has two hands holding it as if it’s a bar she has to keep from closing too tightly around her throat, and asks her a question that has been nagging him for months. He knows better, he should know better, but he obviously doesn’t.

_So, what is it between you and that Fennell kid?_

She hardens instantly. She’s no longer absent, she’s just angry.

_Don’t._

Somehow, and he’s never really been sure how she does it, she makes that one word into a threat, a plea, and a soul despairing empty echo all simultaneously. All the air gets sucked out of the room and suddenly, without moving, she’s made it perfectly clear that his touch is unwelcome. They separate limbs in an awkward shuffle and she lies on her back with a deep, heavy sigh.

The listless finality of it is worse than if she stood up and began pulling on clothes.

Her swallow is audible, probably from houses away.

_What the hell do you want from me?_

It’s a bad question, difficult, because it’s probably the one he’s least prepared to answer. He honestly has no idea. He didn’t know what it was when they began and he certainly doesn’t know now. They don’t talk, they don’t spend quality time, they don’t really do anything except exchange insults in public and bodily fluids in private. Half the time he can’t even be sure it’s pleasure that drives them.

Uncertainty makes him defensive and he knows before he even speaks it’s the wrong thing to do. Her shoulders square and her jaw tightens. Her fingers clench hard on the opposite elbows.

_He’s just a friend. He’s the only friend I have. Let me have that at least._

And when he asks her what she means by that, her eyes roll up to the ceiling, watery and weak.

Her chin trembles and he can see the effort she’s using to override it.

 _I have nothing left, you saw to that. You took…_ Her voice cracks. _Do you know how many lies I have to tell? For months… my dad… I swear…_

He wants to touch her, to reach out and offer comfort, any kind.

 _Everyone knows._ There’s no emotion anymore. _You can’t hide it. They already know what you don’t, what you refuse to…_

She won’t answer when he prods her to finish, to elaborate, to tell him what she’s talking about. He can feel it like a shift in the air, indefinable and just as undeniable. His fingernail tails a soft line down the bare skin of her arm in encouragement. Small little bumps prickle the soft skin, gooseflesh that is the only sign of his effect on her.

He’ll take whatever he can get.

 _What do you want?_ He asks her, and at this point he’s not sure that the desperation is completely unwarranted. _I’ll do…_

She holds out her hand to stop him, and the expression on her face is one of pity, the sort of look someone gives just before they’re about to impart bad news. A sinking feeling rises in his belly like acid. He wants to back pedal. Minutes, hours, days, months… whatever it takes.

The sheet drags across his skin as she stands up, wrapping it around her body and anchoring it under her arms. In that moment, he doesn’t think she’s ever been more beautiful, like some clichéd Grecian statue, all the lines and curves of her highlighted. The Egyptian cotton clings to her hips and the swell of her breasts, dips into the hollow at the top of her thighs, and he has the sudden and inexplicable impulse to call in the family photographer.

Capture her in countless stills, portrait after portrait of her standing there in nothing but a sheet, professional shots of her with nothing at all.

 _I’m just your whore._ The stark, brutal statement shatters the pictures in his head. _Let’s keep it that way and not confuse things._

His room is so much emptier when she’s gone.

***

He leans against her locker and the stream of students parts to accommodate the strange sight.

Their sideways glances and whispered questions, too loud and too audible not to be on purpose, don’t really bother him. They never have. Let them all wonder, let them gossip and talk behind their hands. That’s the whole point after all. That everyone sees.

She gives him a puzzled look, but it’s not outright dismissal or hatred, so that’s something.

He asks her, in a voice loud enough to carry to the people pretending not to listen, if she’ll consider going out on a date with him.

A blush stains her cheeks and her eyebrows crinkle in confusion. She almost smiles, but then she picks a book out of the multitude, closes the locker door firmly, and walks away without saying yes.

It’s not a no, either.

***

That’s the last he sees of her for a week.

She’s an expert in avoidance, having honed it to an art form, and every time he thinks he sees her, she disappears and he’s left in the dust. Suddenly, it’s almost as if she doesn’t go to the same school he does, she doesn’t answer her phone, deletes all the messages he leaves for her, ignores the notes he leaves in her locker and on her car. It’s like he doesn’t exist at all.

There is one place he knows she’ll be, one place she can’t run away from.

Her apartment is small and homey and crowded in among others and he knows that he could never live like that, but somehow it suits her, suits the bustle and energy and life she usually exudes. He knocks on her door after three hours of waiting for her father to leave.

She answers, slowly and reluctantly, only after he makes sure she knows he’s not going anywhere.

There’s something a little off, a little awry about her, the way she stands, the way she holds herself, the way her eyes widen and scatter as if she’s afraid. It looks like she’s been crying. He doesn’t know where to begin, all his long, practiced speeches drop right out of his head.

Not that it particularly matters, she doesn’t waste any time.

_Was it you?_

He doesn’t know what she’s talking about, but she doesn’t believe him, and when she mentions Shelley’s party and the drugs, he gets the sudden, piercing memory of licking her neck, crowing drunkenly over her incapacitated form. It’s not his finest moment, obviously, but apparently it’s not the worst thing. No, no, the worst thing he can do is to say the words ‘body shots’.

A photo frame hits his shoulder.

She starts crying again.

That’s when things go to hell, because he asks her what exactly is wrong and she tells him. The word ‘rape’ hangs between them like a wall, solid and unbreakable. She’s hugging herself, throwing angry, accusing glares his way and he’s completely lost, he can’t do anything but shake his head.

Between them sits a dog with a confused snarl on his face, looking torn between burying his head and jumping to her defense.

 _Was it you?_ She asks it again and the words sink the floor right out of his stomach. _Tell me the truth!_

Even as he starts to deny it, a small figurine is launched and he has to duck. Her voice gets louder, so does his, and in the end they’re screaming. No-nonsense words that are more about getting heard, about being loud, than it is about communication.

 _I wouldn’t do that!_ He doesn’t even know what he’s saying anymore. _How could you think I…?_

She stuns him with one look.

_How could I not?_

He doesn’t have an answer and she knows it.

They begin a dance, a horribly awful and untenable dance where she steps forward and he has no choice but to step back, because even though it’s unsaid he knows that this isn’t a time where he gets to even think about touching her, about bridging that gap.

Before he knows it, he’s cloaked in chilly night air.

 _You’ve hurt me worse in the last year than anyone I know._ The look on her face is stony when she closes the door. _Now stay away from me._

***

He doesn’t hear from her, but he’s been watching.

It’s almost frightening the lengths he will go to, things he’ll find himself doing just to ascertain anything about her, the smallest things. Not the least of which is that she seems to be recovering, he assumes that she found out the truth, or at least solved the mystery to her satisfaction, but it’s not like he’ll know anything. It’s not like they share secrets or even common conversation.

And, honestly, when they slap the cuffs on his wrist, he can’t even find it in himself to be surprised.

***

Alcohol burns on its way down.

At least, it does if he drinks it right. And, if he’s really doing it right, it burns inside the gullet and again when it comes back up. His one main goal is to get so drunk he can forget the sham that is supposedly his life, the complete and utter hypocrisy that is his existence.

As much as he’d laughed at the dreck that was his father’s career, at the sappy optimism of everyone promising a better life when he knew that everything around him was slick appearance over sludgy substance, apparently he’d held some vestige of belief.

It was supposed to be a boy finds girl and escapes from his horrid life scenario. It was never supposed to be boy watches girl get bludgeoned and then finds other girl to torture and terrorize for a year and a half afterwards.

And certainly there wasn’t supposed to be a girl accuses boy of murder act in the middle.

Maybe it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise.

Maybe he should just drink some more, until he can’t taste it, until he can get the mental image of her out of his face, until he can just close his eyes and not have to worry about opening them ever again. Maybe he’d be doing the world a favor.

The radio in his XTerra has been set to some bland station playing out bland songs upon request. Money still buys a lot of things, even if it is just the same song every twenty minutes or so. His mother used to play it, back when she could be bothered putting down her scotch glass. It crackles to life with some late breaking news.

And only the sound of his name pulls his attention.

His father’s name, to be more precise, and it’s like some big, cosmic joke. Father and son accused and arrested for the same crime on the same day, and it would kill his dad to know that he got there first, his father does hate a hackneyed redo, except that he knows the news never would have picked it up unless there was some truth to it, some validity.

Some honest detective work and another murder attempt, an attempt on a yet to be identified teenaged girl and her father. The announcers don’t give out any more than that, not that it’s a particularly difficult puzzle to solve, and he bangs his fists on the steering wheel as he struggles to get the ignition kicked over.

He finds her at her father’s hospital bedside, smoke worn and exhausted and bruised, and she doesn’t meet his eyes as he fights with the security guard to let him pass.

Apparently the name Echolls isn’t helping him any.

She nods to someone else inside the room that he can’t see and slowly walks out, coming to stand near his shoulder. She stares down at their feet and still doesn’t say anything, tiny inside the oversized paramedic jacket clutched around her shoulders, but he understands anyway.

They walk in silence through the tiled, bustling corridors and she follows blindly, zombie like and passive, all the way back to his car. And all the way back to his house. He asks, but she gives no response except a small shake of her head when he suggests her own apartment.

It makes his mouth dry, how quite she is, how deathly still.

He wants to ask what happened, the truth, but the words dry rasped against the skin of his throat as her eyes scrape over the walls of his house. He watches her flinch slightly at the larger than life posters of his father and gently takes her hand leading her away from all of it. She can’t seem to do it herself.

His own room is blessedly and purposefully free of any Aaron Echolls memorabilia.

She looks lost standing in the middle of the room, the bottom inch of her shoes sinking into the carpet, bloody and scratched fingers clutching the zippered edge of the jacket. He moves slowly, but she still flinches when he touches her, just one hand taking hers, examining the damage done.

Her skin is clogged with remnants of smoke and her hair smells like gasoline.

Maybe he doesn’t want to know.

It takes him only a few minutes to run the faucets in the large tub in his bathroom, big billows of steam clouding his face as he tests the temperature, watches the water spurt over his fingers and splash down. He squeezes something floral and pearly, something distinctly female he can’t even remember owning, and watches the bubbles form.

She looks like she hasn’t moved, but he’s felt her eyes on him the entire time.

Carefully, slowly, gently, he kneels down and undoes the laces of her shoes, slips them off her feet, slides the stockings down her legs and lets the wrinkled snakeskin of them fall abandoned on the floor. She doesn’t react as he takes off the jacket, her shirt, her skirt. He’s brief and impersonal as he slips off all her underwear.

She lets him lead her to the tub, doesn’t resist as he lifts her into it, and the only reaction she gives is a soft sigh as she sinks all the way down into the water. Her wrists, carefully bandaged, rest on the porcelain edges of the tub as he kneels down next to it, as he reaches in and fills a cup with the warm water, pouring it over the exposed flesh of her neck and the top of her head.

Slowly, the distance of her eyes begins to melt.

_It was your dad._

Her voice sounds croaked and hoarse.

He just nods and swipes a loofah over the rounded edge of her shoulder.

_He… he… he…_

She seems unable to finish that thought.

_It’s okay._

He’s not sure what he means by that, because none of it, not one little bit, is okay. Not even close. It’s so damnably far from okay that he’s not even sure what that looks like anymore. But she seems to know what he means as she sighs.

_I thought it was you…_

And he has to swallow the urge to tell her that’s okay, too, because it’s so very far from it that he can’t even lie to her right now. She seems to understand that, too.

 _I’d never…_ The words come too large to get out and he chokes on them, has to stop and start again. _How could you think…?_

Her neck rolls, the rest of her eerily still, and her head falls to the side until she’s staring at him, looking him straight in the eyes, and she looks defeated.

 _Because you lied about your alibi._ She doesn’t flinch from her words, but he does. _Because you had a volatile relationship with Lilly._

The skin peaking out of the water is turning a bright pink, coloring the swells of her cleavage and the undersides of her arms, small wisps of hair at the back of her neck curl in the steam.

_Because you have a history of violence with women._

_No._ His head shakes automatically as he feels an invisible fist punch through the layers of his abdomen, stealing his ability to breathe. _No._

 _No?_ Her question is a dry, bitterly amused challenge. _Just me, then?_

She takes a breath, the most deliberate thing he’s seen her do all night, and sinks deep into the water, lets the surface swallow her entire body. Her arms rise and her shoulders squeeze together behind her neck as she lowers herself, as the swirls and eddy of the water rise over her face and the separate tresses of her hair float and dip and tangle on the surface, until only her dirty, bandaged wrists are left.

Four lone islands in the mirrored tub, knees and wrists, and his eyes watch carefully, growing more desperate as he counts the seconds, as he holds his own breath. Just as he contemplates reaching in and pulling her out, she breaks the surface in an explosion of sound, all streaming water and gasping breath.

She doesn’t open her eyes again and he reaches for her knee, wrapping his fingers around the heated, puffy flesh of her calf and sliding it down.

 _Noooo…_ Broken and pleading. _Not now, not tonight…_

His hand follows her calf down all the way to her ankles, reaches between them and pulls the plug.

The drain sucks the water down hungrily, noisily, swirling it around her still form and she seems to grow heavier with every second, body sinking immobile against the bottom of the tub with the disappearance of the buoyant water.

He lifts her out and stands her in the middle of the tiled floor, wraps a large fluffy towel around her hair and uses a second one to pat down her dripping, sodden, forgotten limbs. When he lifts her right leg, she balances automatically by reaching out and placing her hands on his shoulders.

When he wraps her in a large robe, her fingers trace curiously against the lushly embroidered _LE_ and he wants to tell her that it’s merely for decoration, for show, he’s never used it, but the point seems unimportant as he guides her to the bed and lays her down.

Just when he thinks she’s asleep, lying on her back next to him, the default position of staring at the ceiling, breath coming soft and shallow and regular, she turns to him, whole body shifting.

 _He was really going to kill me._ The words are too soft, too gentle and secretive for the meaning they contain. _I thought I was going to die._

He curls his hand against the back of her head and she lays her cheek on his shoulder.

_I found I didn’t want to._

Far from the reassurance he thinks she means, the dark inference of the statement chills him to the bone.

***


End file.
